When Idris Elba appeared on BBC’s “Saturday Kitchen” in late 2024, viewers were given the usual vote: send him off with his Food Heaven or his Food Hell. His heaven was a caramelised apple crumble tart. His hell was Marmite tofu with crispy kale. On a show where the hell dish is built around what the guest would rather not eat, that is about as clear a signal as a star ever sends without quite saying the words. Marmite, it seems, is not for him.
Does Idris Elba like Marmite?
The honest answer is that he had it served to him as his Food Hell, which is not where a food goes if you love it. “Saturday Kitchen” sets up its hell dish around the guest’s dislikes, and in Elba’s case the producers reached for Marmite, paired with tofu and kale. He did not deliver a grand denunciation, but you do not need one when the format has already filed your verdict for you. We have him down as a sceptic rather than a sworn enemy, with the caveat that the strongest evidence is the dish rather than a direct quote.
There is a small irony in it. Elba stopped eating meat in recent years, and Marmite is one of the most reliably plant-based savoury hits going, the sort of thing you might expect a new vegetarian to lean on. It still ended up as his idea of hell.
Who is Idris Elba?
Sir Idrissa Akuna Elba was born on 6 September 1972 in Hackney, east London. His father, Winston, was from Sierra Leone and worked at the Ford plant in Dagenham; his mother, Eve, was Ghanaian. He grew up in Hackney and East Ham, shortened “Idrissa” to “Idris” at school in Canning Town, and got an early leg up from a Prince’s Trust grant to attend the National Youth Music Theatre.
Idris Elba’s breakthrough: The Wire and Luther
Elba broke through in the United States playing the calculating drug lieutenant Stringer Bell in HBO’s “The Wire” in the early 2000s, a performance that made his name with American audiences before British ones quite caught on. He came home to play the brilliant, self-destructive detective John Luther in the BBC’s “Luther”, which ran from 2010 and won him a Golden Globe. The two roles, on either side of the Atlantic, made his name.
Idris Elba on screen and behind the decks
His film career has taken in Nelson Mandela in “Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom”, a terrifying warlord in “Beasts of No Nation”, the Norse god Heimdall across several Marvel films, and the “Fast and Furious” spin-off “Hobbs and Shaw”. He is also a serious DJ, performing as DJ Big Driis, and has long been a name floated whenever the subject of the next James Bond comes up. A busy, restless career, with one small and well-documented gap in it where the Marmite should be.
Idris Elba’s notable work at a glance
- The Wire (2002-2004), as Stringer Bell
- Luther (2010-2019), as DCI John Luther
- Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (2013)
- Beasts of No Nation (2015)
- The Thor and wider Marvel films, as Heimdall
- Hobbs and Shaw (2019)
